Wodz 1 Karisa Wodz Fayeza Hasanat LIT3482 9/30/2012 The Loss of Human Aura and Power in The Matrix

The Matrix was a hit in 1999 when it hit the box office. The sci-fi thriller had such a unique plot line that movie goers could not keep away. The film follows Thomas Anderson (aka: Neo) a computer programmer-slash-hacker who discovered that the world he knows is nothing more than an elaborate computer program designed to stimulate human minds as their bodies are farmed by machines for energy. Neos mind is freed and his body retrieved from the farm by another freed human named Morpheus. Eventually, Neo hooks his mind into a computer and hacks into the Matrix computer program in attempts to shut it down and free all the human minds still unaware of its existence. I chose the Matrix as my literary text because I believe it holds many cultural metaphors relevant to Michael Foucaults Space, Knowledge and Power and Walter Benjamins The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproduction. Much like the Matrix film, modern society lives in a world designed for us by the media, politicians and social constructs (religion included). Most decisions are not made out of freedom but out of necessity due to one or more of the above elements. The Matrix film series eventually explains how the mind stimulating computer program of the Matrix was designed by a man called The Architect. In the film The Architect is responsible for the Matrix programs flaws and successes.

Wodz 2 In Foucaults interview entitled Space, Power and Knowledge he often spoke about the correlation of freedom and power. Men have dreamed of liberating machines. In the matrix, mankind created machines of artificial intelligence in order to help with the labors of life. Eventually the machines in the film grew smarter; they determined that they were the more superior race and began taking over. Humans were eventually farmed and grown in human birthing sacks for their entire lives. By connecting their minds to a computer program, humans never woke from birth and stayed in this dream-like state as their brains were stimulated by the Matrix program. This symbolism that the film uses plays up the notion that people are always trying to outdo ourselves. It was Darwinism that led to humans, narcissism that lead to the creation of machines and then Darwinism again when the machines over took the humans. Im saying this not in order to criticize rationality, but in order to show how ambiguous things are it was on the basis of the flamboyant rationality of social Darwinism that racism was formulated, becoming one of the most enduring and powerful ingredients of Nazism. This was, of course, an irrationality, but an irrationality that was at the same time, after all, a certain form of rationality. . . . Foucault is ultimately saying, what did you expect would happen? Irrationality is caused by rational thought mixed with obscure knowledge and an image of power. In the film, this dream program (Matrix) allows other programs like Agents to interact with human minds, even to kill them. Everything in the Matrix is connected; the Agent program can even take over a humans mind and body, replacing it with their own. Foucault describes this notion that everything is connected saying that nothing is fundamental; there are only reciprocal relations, and the perpetual gaps between intentions in relation to one another. In the film, the link between the real world, the Matrix program and the agent program, a program

Wodz 3 that more or less polices the functionality of the matrix, are all interconnected, even when they all have opposing realities. When a human mind is killed, the human body dies as well, the body cannot survive without the mind, Morpheus says when explaining that death in the program results with death in reality. There is another character called the Oracle; she, much like The Architect, helps to balance out the Matrix, giving and withholding power; other relational connection. After all, the architect has no power over methe architect has no control... I would say that one must take him his mentality, his attitude into account as well as his projects, in order to understand a certain number of the techniques of power that are invested in architecture. The Matrix film pulls from this social theory when the writer named the program created the architect. Even though The Architect and the Oracle are the creators of the Matrix, they do not have total control over its function. To take total control would crash the system in which they created. In the film, the Matrix program was originally developed to control human minds, giving them a utopia, a perfect world, for their minds. The human minds rejected the utopian program and it crashed. It was not until a program was created that allowed the minds to unconsciously make choices, giving them some control of power; that the program was successful. Foucault said, If one were to find a place, and perhaps there are some, where liberty is effectively exercised, one would find that this is not owing to the order of objects, but, once again, owing to the practice of liberty. Which is not to say that, after all, one may as well leave people in slums, thinking that they can simply exercise their rights there. Leaving the minds of the humans in the Matrix world is like leaving them in the slums. Even with some freedom to make choices, there is still not true freedom.

Wodz 4 Benjamin's theory on art can also be used to describe why the freed minds of the real world felt compelled to free all the minds in the Matrix program. As Dr. H put it, technological reproduction on a mass scale creates an absence of that soul. In the case of the Matrix, the art is human life. The concept of binary opposition of presence/absence is tested. The film allows the human minds to make choices in the program world but their mind is still locked in a program, they are not truly present in their own life. Much like how Benjamin feels art is being lost, the freed minds of the Matrix world felt that the human race was being lost. When a mind was trapped in the Matrix it meant the actual human body was at the farming pods. The human bodies relied on feeding tubes and a digital download for their brain, the very functioning aspect that made them human was taken away. They were mass produced as energy for machines and therefore lost their aura of the human existence. The Matrix film contains many social references to modern society. Peoples desire to rely on technological assistance for labor or critical thinking may feel like a way of freeing the mind for relaxation and from worry but are we handicapping ourselves by becoming too reliant? The film introduces many elements of social theories. The what they dont know wont hurt them mentality is often used by the government and media to shape the way people shop, vote and live. Much like how the Matrix allowed human minds to make choices, the government and media allow people to make decisions. Like society and the minds of the Matrix, people believe that they have freedom and control when they are really making decisions based on relational cause and effects manipulated by the powers of society. Power and domination is really disguise and illusion; no one can truly be free when they are in control.

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